We got 22″ of rain in Corsicana Tx this past Friday. I was creeping along through puddles and my car died. It started back up but died again. Hasn’t started since.
I went to oreillys, bought a dry air filter, set of plugs, and a can of PB Blaster.
Removed cap and rotor and flooded the distributor with PB, reinstalled cap and rotor. I pulled the plugs and cranked the engine over for a few seconds at least, to blow out any water that was present, and replaced the plugs with properly gapped(.044) copper core NGKs. Car not firing at all, even with a small either shot.
I brought the car home on a dolly today, and swapped the entire distributor, cap, rotor, and wires from a parts car that I just purchased a couple weeks ago. I know the components are all in good order because the parts car runs. The parts car has a knock but everything worked on it.
I’m at my wits end at this point. Any help would be greatly appreciated. And no, the rotor was not 180 degrees out when I replaced the distributor.
Thanks for any and all input.
An Engine requires 4 things to run. Your job is to determine what it is not getting.
1) Spark – Spark at spark plug test
2) Fuel – Fuel pressure and Injector Pulse
3) Compression – Cylinder compression test (all cylinder with in 20 PSI)
4) Timing – All of the above at the right time
What I would like to see is Spark test by placing a spark plug in the plug wire and letting it rest on the side of the engine and crank the engine to check for spark.
Have spark…. spray an excessive amount of starting fluid in the air filter, place gas pedal all the way down and crank engine over for 10 seconds to see if it will start.
No Spark, check for fuel injector pulse… No injector pulse or spark? Check the ECM Fuse.
This is the tool I use : Injector Pulse Tester…
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I know for certain that the issue isn’t fuel related or it would have at least coughed when I shot either directly into the intake. I mean I pulled the intake hose and got a good direct hit.
I loaned out my compression tester a while back and it’s gone.
Any other time I would be with you on the timing but considering the 22″ of rain we got that day and the water that I was splashing through, that would be a strange coincidence imo.
Without any specialty tools on hand I guess I’ll swap a few relays off of my parts car today and also the ignition control module and give her a go. Also I will pull the plugs again, crank her over for a few seconds and go ahead and spray some pb down in the chambers while I’m at it.
I’ve had the same experience when washing the engine bay at a high pressure car wash but pulling the plugs and hosing it all down with a WD-40 equivalent did the trick and I had it going in 30 minutes.
The timing belt is broken. No signs of wear or deterioration which makes me think I trashed the engine. Thoughts?
Your in luck and its Time to save you some money as this is not an interference engine. Engine should be fine once you have installed a new timing belt.
I aligned the mark on the harmonic balancer with the 0 on the lower cover, and I confirmed that the number one piston was at the top of its stroke. Then I removed balancer and lined the marks up with the camshaft gear and installed the new belt. Once I got it back together it decided it didn’t want to fire. What have I done wrong? I’m handy with my wrenches but far from a mechanic. How many times does the cam go around through the course of a revolution? I tried one more time by taking the belt off of the cam gear, with the balancer back at 0 Tdc, and rotated the cam clockwise until it came back around to the mark. Still no go
I have a 30mm socket if it would be easy enough to put the cams in the right position visually by removing the valve cover. But I don’t know what the orientation of the lobes needs to be. It’s a twin cam motor, but the cams are synced together internally. Only one cam gear per the belt
I’ve done a little digging online. I may not have been on the compression stroke, or could have been a single tooth off when I tensioned the belt.
So my question is this: if the crank makes 2 revolutions, one for the intake and exhaust stroke, how many times does the cam come around?
Lining up the marks is simple enough.
The crank needs to be a TDC and sounds like you have a handle on that part. However the Cams have to be “OFF LOBE”, this means both valves need to be closed at TDC when the engine fires. If the valves are open you may hear a back fire.
One of the toughest things when putting the belt on is getting them to stay inline. You line everything up, put the belt on and then when you release the tensioner you need to rotate the engine a couple of times(by hand) to make sure the marks are lined up still.
What happens in most cases is the belt is one or two teeth off after spinning the engine over, in most cases putting the belt on a tooth ahead then release the tensioner , rotate twice to double check marks and should be good to go.
Your engine is a 4 stroke engine. This means the pistons go up and down 4 times per cycle. At TDC the engine fires and shoves the piston downward with all camshaft valves closed. on its way back up the exhaust valve opens to allow the exhaust out and then the piston moves back down while opening the intake valve to allow fuel in before heading back up to TDC to start all over again.
1994 Toyota Camry 2.2L Engine Timing Belt Replacement Procedure
Thank you for the best explanation I’ve ever heard
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